Website

[i_love_burritos]

Seeing as TIF has a large number of very tech-savvy people [web designers, other stuff, I dont know, that's why I'm asking. "Coders" - yeah go ahead, laugh.]

I thought I'd post here.

 

I'm wanting to make a website for x reasons, which would contain y. A fairly simple website. Mostly text with a few diagrams, simple animations, perhaps a messageboard. It doesn't require an overly professional layout or anything, clean and minimalist.

 

What would I need to learn, and how would I go about it.

 

All your help is appreciated. :thumbup:

 

And I'm not too sure about "hosting", creating/buying a domain name, and whatnot, so yeah... fill me in ?

 

Again, thanks.

[JoeDaStudd]

Define simple animations, are you talking gif's or animations based on user action?

To get a rough idea of coding websites (its very simple if you only want basic stuff) read though these to pages Tizag and w3schools.

If you just want static information then you should get good enough hosting from one of the free providers out there (your ISP might even give you free hosting as part of your package).

With a basic site html, css and some javascript (just to add some extra functionality) would be enough.

[i_love_burritos]

Cool, thanks !

 

Animations ? Oh, I'd just be um, "getting them from others". Just like gifs. No more than 10 seconds long.

 

Think of like, Maddox's site, but for a different purpose. More headings, better organized. Etc..

 

I dont exactly want it to look like a gigantic word document floating on the internets, if you know what I mean.

 

it should have some form of cohesion and presentability.

 

EDIT:

 

Kindof like this

 

http://www.purplemath.com/

[Racheya]

To make a proper website you'll need an FTP system to upload the webpages. It's simple to use once you get a hang of it. I use Filezilla since it's free but I think there are other options out there.

 

Hosting is basically where your webpages are held and the domain name is what points to them. Many free webhosts come with a domain name like blahwebsite.hostname.com so unless you want blahwebsite.com then you don't have to worry about domains too much, they're rather cheap anyway. Good free webhosts are hard to find but I personally use 000webhost since it gives you space for everything you need and also doesn't have advertisements.

 

Like JoeDaStudd said, you need basic HTML and CSS knowledge. Using a tiny bit of PHP to insert headers and footers is good also since you only need to edit those two files and your CSS stylesheet to change the look of the entire website. When I first started using HTML I used Lissa Explains which is kind of a kiddy website but it's good help for the basics. You'll be able to find some templates for website layouts if you google it, since it's difficult to make your own layout with like a sidebar from scratch.

[JoeDaStudd]

That example would be pretty easy to create.

Personally I would keep away from tables without there needed in the page.

This site is one of the best resources for css templates and concepts I've found.

 

I tend to use a slightly modified version of this layout.

 

If your willing to spend a few $/£'s on a reliable host and your own domain name (I think it costs me about £11 per year) then you should look at php as well.Just learning the basics can save a lot of time copy and pasting code over and over like Racheya said.

 

Best thing to do would be look over the html and css guides from the 2 sites I posted in my other post then draw up a site plan.

What you want it to look like, which pages your going to have, how there linked together and anything special.

Once you know what your aiming for you can then start working towards it.

 

O and I asked about the animation as people sometimes mean flash when they say animation, which requires various programs and costs a far bit for the software.